Denial

For this episode, I interviewed Michael Tomczyk. Michael was with Commodore for some time, was an assistant to none other than Jack Tramiel, and was the leader of the team known as the Vic Commando Team. He was happy to talk about his time at Commodore and turned out to be a very interesting interview and a great guy with which to talk.

http://floppydays.libsyn.com/floppy-day ... zyk-vic-20

Randy Kindig
host Floppy Days Podcast - http://www.floppydays.com, http://floppydays.libsyn.com/rss
available for download or streaming from iTunes, the Web site, Google Play, Stitcher.com

Great! Thanks for that.

A really amazing interview, stories with insights one wouldn't belief, if this wasn't Michael Tomczyk.
Just one single interview which explains all of the core Vic-20 history, which I wanted to know all the years.

Sometimes, I wonder if Michael Tomczyk, albeit a very nice, smart and friendly guy as his computer , tends to inflate stories a bit...

I don't really know much about Michael Tomczyk, but Leonard Tramiel advised to "Believe nothing Michael Tomczyk says." when he spoke at CommVEx in 2015. I didn't concern myself with it, but Bil Herd was standing right next to him and backed what he was saying.

Not trying to start an argument or anything, just passing on what I had heard...

He was always very nice and helpful. He wrote some posts here in Denial in the past; cooperated with the author and wrote the preface to Giacomo's wonderful VIC book; made an excellent presentation at Vigamus in Rome (2012); and so on. His "Home Computer Wars" book has been the starting point for subsequent histories of the early Commodore days (Bagnall, Vivarelli, etc.).

I regard him as one of the greatest in his field, which we shouldn't forget was not about technical projects and development (he seems to forget tech specs ), but marketing. Making the VIC appealing to "virgin" consumers wasn't an easy task, but he delivered more than expected. Given his background, in some way, I think he's also a great advertiser of himself .

Yeah, Tomczyk always seemed like a pretty neat guy to me, just in any of the interviews with him that I have seen.

I'm thinking that regardless of who is responsible for any aspect of the VIC-20, I'm glad they pulled it off, because it's one fun machine!